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| Ciudad de la Habana, Cuba |
Condemnation of The Toronto Star article of March 16, 2013, continues to pour in.
Condemn
Media Campaign Against
Revolutionary Cuba
Revolutionary Cuba
- Tony Seed -
The Toronto
Star and El Nuevo
Herald, the
Spanish-language sister publication of the Miami
Herald, have
conspired to publish a sensationalist series on "sex tourism" to
Cuba. The series began precisely one month to the day following the
"visit" by Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird to Cuba on February
15, 2013 and his provocative meeting with "dissidents." "He
pledged Canada's support for efforts to secure freedom, democracy, human rights
and the rule of law," his department said at the time in a release,
"in the only remaining Communist country in the Western hemisphere."
Now the "dissidents" have emerged, writes Andrew Brett, to form the
main "source" for the Toronto-Miami media disinformation blaming the
Cuban people and government, who are the victims, for "sex tourism."
Far from being a coincidence, the series serves the agenda of the Harper
government of political destabilization and isolation of all opposition to imperialist
dictate in the Americas.
The Star also writes: "Although
Canada has had a law against abusing children abroad since 1997, it is
undermined by the inability of law enforcement officials to monitor sexual
offenders as they slip out of the country." Thus, under the banner of high
ideals, it furnishes the Harper Government the pretext to collect information
on all those Canadians travelling to the independent socialist Republic of
Cuba.
Toronto
Star Makes Up Facts in Exposé
- Andrew Brett, March 17, 2013 -
"There
is truly no prostitution healthier than Cuba's," said Fidel Castro in
1992. Or so claims theToronto Star. But did he really?
Not at
all. Castro actually said, "There is truly no tourism healthier than
Cuba's."
This just
scratches the surface of the fact-free reporting of the Star in its new series "The Ugly
Canadians," an exposé of a supposed epidemic of Canadians travelling to
Cuba for child sex tourism.
"Canadians
are travelling to Cuba in surprising numbers to sexually exploit young
people," the first article in the series says. Just how surprising are
these numbers? Well, they can't say. The same article admits that they don't
actually know, because the Canadian government doesn't reveal the number of
Canadians prosecuted in Cuba for sex crimes.
The only
facts they can point to are in a 2011 RCMP report that lists Cuba as "a
top destination in the Americas" for sex tourism. No, not the top. One of
them. In the Americas. And where does Cuba rank in this list? The article
doesn't say.
So why
have they decided to highlight sex tourism to Cuba instead of, say, the actual
top destination?
Why do
the Cubans quoted happen to be a "dissident lawyer" and a
"dissident blogger"?
Why did
the article print a fabricated pro-prostitution quote attributed to Castro?
The
series on Cuban sex tourism is not being published by the Star alone. Its partner in the
series, El Nuevo Herald, is the Spanish-language sister publication of the
Miami Herald, known
for editorializing against the Cuban government and for employing journalists
paid by the U.S. government to disseminate anti-Cuban propaganda.
Could
this joint series actually be a deliberate attempt to stigmatize the Cuban
tourism industry, a backbone of the Cuban economy? A modern-day, liberal
version of the "red scare"? In 2004, President Bush similarly warned
about child sex tourism to justify his government's travel restrictions on
Cuba, without any evidence to suggest the problem is more prevalent on the
island.
With
close to one million visitors a year, Canadians are the primary market for the
Cuban tourism industry, a major source of funding for the Cuban economy. If
anyone wanted to target Cuban tourism, the Canadian market would be the place
to start.
Whatever
the intention of playing fast and loose with the facts, it raises questions
about the editorial influence of the Herald on this series, and whether the
remaining articles will be based on evidence or just conjecture of opponents of
the Cuban government.
(Originally
published on Rabble.ca)
As of May
2012 Cuba is now the third most popular Caribbean country for tourists,
trailing the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, according to Carlos Vogeler,
General Director for the Americas of the World Tourism Organization (WTO).
Vogeler's remarks were quoted by the Cuban News Agency last spring during his
visit to the Cuban islands known as the King's Gardens (Jardines del Rey) as
part of Cuba's 32nd International Tourism Fair, FITCuba 2012.
Vogeler
said the improvements in Cuba's tourism industry are reflected in the
increasing number of visitors each year. As Cuba's level of tourism has
improved so has the quality of its tourism fairs. Holding the 2012 fair in Cayo
Santa Maria on the King's Gardens was a great opportunity for many foreigners
to get to know the natural beauty of the Coco and Guillermo Keys, an area of
great tourist potential barely known outside Cuba, Vogeler said.
Representatives
of tour operators, travel agents, hotel chains and airlines toured the
different facilities in the keys off the northern central Cuban coast. There
they could see the beauty of the Playa Pilar resort, one of the most beautiful
places in Cuba, where the sand dunes are among the best preserved in the
region.
This
year's FITCuba will take place in Veradero, Matanzaz province, Cuba's most
famous beach, from May 7 to 10.
- Manuel E. Yepe, March 4, 2013 -
The
special immigration status which the U.S. Cuban
Adjustment Act grants
Cuban citizens has become even more of a problem for Washington in light of
Cuba's new travel regulations.
A Chicago
Tribune
editorial published on February 16 tackled this important issue in the White
House´s policy against Cuba from a very unusual perspective in U.S. media: the
privileges and immigration rights the so-called Cuban Adjustment Act
grants to Cubans and denies to all other citizens on the planet.
The Chicago
Tribune
editorial explains that for Cubans who want to immigrate to the United States,
the hardest part is getting there, because, since 1966, they've essentially
been granted automatic refugee status on arrival.
Almost
half a century later, states the paper, Cubans who get to the U.S. rarely claim
to be victims of political persecution. They want a better economic future, or
to join family members already there, or both -- just like most people who want
to immigrate from anywhere else.
Unlike
most immigrants, though, Cubans don't have to wait years for a visa, or sneak
across the border illegally. Once they're in, they're fast-tracked to legal
residency, with a clear path to citizenship, the Tribune's editorial notes.
It's a
sore subject as Congress considers what to do with the 11 million undocumented
immigrants to whom the system has not been so generous, the editorial
complains.
Those
immigrants -- more than half of them from Mexico -- live and work under the
government's radar, often for very low wages, constantly in fear of being
deported.
"To
come here legally, most Mexican laborers would have to wait decades for a visa.
But Cubans who present themselves at our southern border -- a common point of
entry, thanks to the U.S. "wet foot, dry foot" policy -- are allowed
in once they show a Cuban ID. These special considerations are especially hard
to defend now that Cubans can travel freely between the U.S. and their
homeland."
According
to the Tribune, after 2009 when President Barack Obama lifted
most of the limits that kept Cuban-Americans from traveling to the island to
visit family, last year, more than 400,000 of them did so, some of them dozens
of times.
"In
January, the Cuban government began allowing citizens to leave without an exit
permit. Passports are now granted more liberally, and those who leave can stay
away up to two years without losing their residency. Most Cubans are able to
come and go at will," says the editorial.
It's hard
to argue that Cubans who can come and go as they please are in need of special
considerations normally reserved for victims of a political repression they are
not suffering when the only thing they did was dodge Coast Guard boats long
enough to tag American soil.
"To
be fair," admits the paper, "those immigrants aren't lying about
their circumstances. They're not required to demonstrate that they're political
refugees." They come because they can thanks to the privileges granted by
the anti-Cuba Act.
The Chicago paper says this isn't fair, "Cubans who want to come
here for economic reasons should play by the same rules as economic immigrants
from other countries," it argues.
Since it
was passed in 1966 as an instrument of aggression against the Revolution, the Cuban
Adjustment Act has
caused an incalculable number of Cuban deaths -- sometimes whole families in
reckless expeditions through the Strait of Florida -- encouraged by the limitations
imposed on Cuba for more than half a century by the U.S. economic blockade, and
by the promise of access to a paradise on Earth.
"We
have no problem with allowing Cuban-Americans to travel back and forth to
Cuba," says the Chicago Tribune editorial, and proposes that Congress ought to
eliminate the travel ban entirely, so that all Americans can visit the island
just like tourists from all other countries in the world who have been flocking
to Cuba for years.
(A
CubaNews translation. Edited by Walter Lippmann)
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